


Open Hearts

by cloudsinmycoffee9



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:52:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1917033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudsinmycoffee9/pseuds/cloudsinmycoffee9





	1. Chapter 1

She could not say when or how she had learned it, but a silent language had grown between the two of them. She has learned to read his facial expressions and posture in a way she had not thought possible when she first met this solemn Northern man, all those years ago.

She understands when he thinks the children have done something funny, but he knows he cannot laugh. She sees it in the slight flaring in his nostrils and the way he glances to her for a second to acknowledge the humor in the situation before crouching down to softly but sternly discipline the little ones, or pierce the older children with a glare and speak in icy tones of honor and responsibility as Starks of Winterfell. And she knows he will bring it up later in her bedchambers, so that they might laugh about the tiny faces and personalities that are a mesh of their own.

She knows when he is concerned about or frustrated with his men by the shift in his weight and the tight lips. His tone of voice has transformed from somewhat defensive to more authoritative with the Winterfell men over the years. She has watched him grow slowly more comfortable in this position of lord which he had never thought to hold. But she knows he often second-guesses himself and feels second-guessed by those he leads. And so she knows to go to his solar at night, where he will be up late reading ledgers and letters, to coax him away from the never-ending duty and into her bedchambers, and to let him know through words and actions that he is indeed a worthy, honorable, and strong leader of the North.

If he is proud of something, especially the children, he stands taller and his voice sounds rich and full, sure of the few words he will say. She hears the lump in his throat when he speaks, and sees the glow in his eye as he eyes Robb’s swordplay, compliments Sansa’s embroidery, watches Arya practice agility with her pony, or witnesses another milestone in Bran or Rickon.

When he wants her, his hands find ways to touch her when no one might see. His fingers trail through the ends of her hair and pull at her braids to bring her close for a kiss when convenient. His palms find the small of her back, cup her elbows, and dance over her thigh under the table. She catches his eyes roaming over her body, feeling them settle on her face and she wishes she could fight the knowing flush of her cheeks in response.

But there are nights she dresses to invite it, in colors and cuts of fabric she knows he likes, and she waves away her maids so she might leave all of her hair down, anticipating his hands running through it. She says things to spark his desire, and delights in the easy way he picks up on her cues. She loves to sense the anticipation growing between them and hear the subtext in his suggestions that the children look tired and should be taken to bed early.

She knows his need to be especially urgent whenever he volunteers to take them to bed himself.

But lately there are things she cannot easily read in him. Something in those grey eyes starts to look far away; his features soften or grow anxious, depending on what he sees in his memories. His shoulders tense so tightly under his clothes that she moves deliberately and slowly to make sure he is aware of her presence before she ever touches him.

She isn’t sure what to do, what questions to ask, or if he’d even answer.

One day she discovers him braced against the railing, drawn tight against something he doesn't want to feel. She starts with her hands around his waist, feeling him tense briefly before returning her embrace.

“Are you all right, my love?”

She follows his gaze to the courtyard below, where he watches Arya chase the boys around, demanding Jon teach her how to use his sword. As they watch, Jon dodges her for a few moments, then laughs and swings her up in his arms, tossing her in the air and catching her in a hug to whisper something to make her smile.

Catelyn winces internally at the sight – their daughter, a trueborn Stark of Winterfell, embracing the bastard of Winterfell with such happiness. But she looks up and sees a different kind of pain on Ned’s face as he watches the easy affection between their daughter and Jon Snow.

She is about to ask him what he is thinking of when he shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts away.

“My love?” she presses. “Are you all right – “

He clears his throat to interrupt her.

“Of course.” He kisses her forehead and walks down the hallway that leads to his solar.

She watches him walk away, knowing something is amiss, but not sure just what.

Later that night, she wakes to his muffled cries as he struggles against the sheets in his sleep.

“No . . . NO!” he yells, his fists turning in the fabric as his body thrashes against the bed.

“Ned. . .” she calls to him softly.

“Lyanna. . . I promise . . . Lyanna. . .”

“Ned!” She sits up in bed, turning, and her hands land softly on his bare chest, willing him back to her. She has spent nights with him when he has dreamt of the wars, and she knows to bring him slowly back to himself. But this is different. She has never heard him call his sister’s name before.

“My love, wake up. It is a bad dream. Wake up, Ned.”

His movements slow and at last she is able to capture his face between her hands. His breath comes fast, his eyes darting about the room, and she can feel the sweat under her fingertips, but he is coming around to the present moment.

“Lyanna?” he asks, in a voice so soft and hopeful she feels her heart break for her husband.

“No, I am sorry, Ned,” she whispers, blinking back tears. “It is only me.”

He blinks slowly as he focuses on her face. “Cat,” he says softly.

“You were having a nightmare, my love.” She reaches to stroke her fingers through his hair, letting the back of her hand rest briefly on his forehead, feeling the uncharacteristic heat before continuing. “Do you remember it?”

His eyes cloud over then and he shifts his gaze away from her. He hesitates before replying. “No. But I am sorry I woke you.”

She looks at him a long moment, knowing he is lying but not sure why.

“I do not mind being awake, my love.” She twists her body and leans over his, resting her weight on her hand by his side and letting her hair fall across his chest. “You have spent many long nights with me when I could not sleep. Are you sure you do not remember?” she asked, leaning into his palm as it comes to rest on her cheek. _I heard you say her name,_ she wanted to say. _I know it was about your sister._ As everyone did, Catelyn knew the essentials of what had happened in the Tower that day, but Ned had never spoken of his last moments with his sister. _You can tell me about it, my love. Please. Let me comfort you._

He sighs before replying. “I do not wish to speak of it, Cat,” he replies before pulling her closer.

“But, Ned,” she hesitates for a moment before allowing her body to melt against his as he touches her. He kisses her cheeks, her eyes, and she lets him find solace in his lips against her face.

She braces herself over him, turning her head to the side so he might kiss her neck, and feels his hands begin the familiar journey up and down her back.

He pulls back for a moment, searching her face. “Cat?” he asks, his eyes questioning hers.

She knows she will get no further conversation from him, but she might give him this.

She nods yes, feeling his need against her thigh, knowing that he is feeling things he will not say out loud at the moment. They have both been in that place – where one needed to push memories and emotions to the side, and give into feeling the warmth and strength of each other, just to feel and smell and taste the pull of someone grounding them to the earth. _I know you do not want to remember, my love,_ she thinks. _I will be real for you._

He pulls at her shift and rolls her beneath him, and she lets their bodies meet where he will not yet let their minds. She prays to the gods that if her husband cannot yet trust her with his memories, that he might at least trust her more each day with their future, and that he would one day trust her to take care of his heart.


	2. Chapter 2

_I do not wish to speak of it, Cat._ He has no other words for her--none that he can bring himself to say. But even as she relaxes into his touch, offering herself to him as comfort for whatever troubles him, he knows she wishes he had more words. 

He cannot decide which is harder – telling her or not telling her. He does not know when it began, but the bond between them has grown so strong, has become so much more than he could ever have hoped, that to keep his thoughts hidden from her proves more difficult every day.

But on this particular subject, an area they have so studiously avoided all these years, he hesitates. And it gnaws at him daily.

 

He has become used to telling her almost everything. This bond wasn’t there the first few years of their marriage, but they learned to trust each other and how to communicate. They cared enough about their children and the people and land they ruled together that they had finally came to care about each other, she has become the one person he can confide most in. In the darkness of her bedchambers, especially, her head on his chest and his arms wrapped around her, it has become easier than he ever would have thought to answer her questions about the meetings in his solar, the various ravens received that day, the quarrels he settles among the people of Winterfell. He seeks her counsel and weighs her advice seriously. She had been raised to be the Lady of the North since she was twelve, after all. He had never thought about being the Warden of the North, about being an important lord, about any of this until he had to. Until it had been forced upon him.

 

He lacks the words and maybe the courage to tell her, but her encouragement has strengthened him, has made him the lord he has become. She supports and reassures him in word and action, and he accepts it silently but gratefully. He feels the equal importance of their roles as Lord and Lady of Winterfell. Even though his is the voice of authority and he is the head of Winterfell, he knows she has come to be its heart.

 _How long have I loved you?_  He had wondered at the evening meal. Her hand had found his under the table at every chance, and he had felt her eyes on him at every move. He had watched her laugh with the children, the candlelight reflecting shades of the sun off her hair, catching the small dusting of freckles across her bosom. He knows well that every eye and ear of the people of Winterfell within distance leans towards her when she speaks. But often when she catches his eye, he feels as though they might be the only two people in the room, and just as he does on most nights, he had longed for this night's meal to end so that they might be alone.

He had seen her worried glance and felt the weight of her question earlier as they had watched Arya with Jon in the courtyard. How could he have possibly said what he was truly thinking? That he saw himself in Jon, his sister Lyanna in Arya. That he wished a thousand times every day that she had lived to see the young man her son was becoming. That he wished a thousand times a day that she had lived.

The weight of the memory of his sister dying in his arms, begging with her last breath for him to care for her son suddenly appears so clearly in his mind’s eye that he stops breathing for a moment, lost in the terrifying clear image of Lyanna’s body slowly going limp in his grasp.

 

Her breath catches slightly when he stills in that moment, and he knows he would be a fool to think she will not notice or let this go entirely. The memory of his whispered "Lyanna" echoes silently between them even as he buries his face into his wife’s hair, willing himself to forget the nightmare, just as he has tried to forget the others. 

With her permission, he pushes down her shift and lets himself focus on her, feeling her arms wind around him and her long fingers moving under his shirt to drag them along his back as their mouths meet, slowly at first. He kisses her neck to hear the way she always moans his name when he does, kisses the breasts that fed their children, feeling her legs start to rub against his. He moves down lower on the bed and everything that isn’t her - her movements, her breathing, the arch in her back - begins to fade away.

Soon her hands in his hair are pulling him up to join her, and he pulls off his breeches and small clothes before meeting her lips again. He sees the surprise in her eyes when he pulls her hand away as she reaches to guide him inside her. But when he rolls to his back and brings her with him, her legs part over his hips instinctively and she places a hand on each side of his head. When she smiles down at him, he can’t help but reach up and pull her mouth to his, kissing her deeply as she reaches between them again. This time he lets her slide him deep inside, and he thrusts up into her warmth. She leans back and begins to move, guiding his hands to her breasts again. Her shift covers where they are joined, her hair falling all around her, and she is so beautiful in the dying candlelight, there is no room in his mind for anything but her.

 

When she finds her pleasure at last with his name a chant on her lips, he is not far behind. Before she collapses, he pulls her shift up and over her head, bringing her naked down to him and pulling the furs up over her shoulders before she begins to shiver. She laughs softly at him, her arm wrapped around his middle and legs tucked snugly around his.

They whisper back and forth for a few moments before he feels her growing heavier against him, and he thanks the old gods, the new, any that might be listening, for this woman who saves him again and again.

Sheltered from the world together under furs, except for the arm and leg he has to stick out or he feels he might actually melt from the heat, her mouth pressing lazy kisses to his chest as he pulls her closer, he knows that at least for the rest of the night, he will feel safe.


	3. Chapter 3

It is not the first time in their marriage she wishes he might find his words more easily, but she cannot imagine him being any other way. He has nearly always showed her how he felt through his actions--the attention he paid her while she carried and birthed every child after Robb, the sept he had built just for her, the little gifts she finds in her bedchambers after he returns to Winterfell from a visit somewhere.

She had hoped that their lovemaking might somehow ease her husband to sleep at least, if she could not have the conversation about his nightmare she so desperately desires.Yet she feels him toss restlessly beside her all night, and knows he sleeps as little as she does.

Her concern grows when he moves gently away from her before the sun even rises, and she watches him slide silently into his clothes, clearly trying not to wake her. 

 _You haven’t fooled me in a long time, Eddard Stark,_  she thinks, and her heart beats rapidly as she holds her breath when he drops his face close to hers, checking to see if she is awake.

 _Kiss me, my love,_  she pleads silently.  _Kiss me so that I know you are all right._

He hovers so close to her she can feel his breath on her face, and a hand gently pull the furs up over her shoulders. She is about to reach for him when, apparently satisfied that she slumbers on, he pulls back and pads his way quietly to her chamber door. She opens her eyes now, hearing the soft snick of the wood when he shuts it behind him to head to his own chambers to dress for the day.

She knows the sky is still dark behind the curtains that shade the windows, and that she could sleep for a few hours still, but instead she eyes the indentation still upon her husband’s pillow and wonders what it is he will not say.

 

His nightmare of Lyanna now seems clearly provoked from watching Arya play earlier, begging her brother (her bastard brother, Catelyn reminds herself, unnecessarily) to let her play swords. 

The folk of Winterfell often remark on the similarities in look and personality they see between her daughter and Ned’s younger sister. She may have wished for a son to first so share the Stark look, but Catelyn knows how much her husband loved his sister, and how much he loves their daughter, and she sees enough Tully in Arya to never truly mind the comparison. Like all their children, Arya is a complex blend of their two distinct looks and personalities. And as the third child (Catelyn cannot make herself count the bastard in this) Arya has an undefined role about the castle, and perhaps rebels a bit more and is indulged a bit more than most children of such noble birth might be. But this is the North, and it seems they can make their own set of rules here sometimes. Arya can be stubborn and dirty more often than she is clean, but Catelyn knows her daughter is clever and kind, and makes her parents laugh more often than the other children do.

Her happy reflections change as she continues to ponder the matter, for if Ned saw Lyanna in Arya, he must see himself in his bastard, Catelyn thinks, bitterly. Perhaps he wishes for more sons that look so like him, more sons that look as though they belong in the North, with their grey eyes and solemn ways. Are five trueborn children not enough? She wonders. Does Ned want more, as if to make up for the Stark bloodlines lost in the deaths of his brother, his sister, and Benjen at the wall?

 

 _Would he have told **her**  what he wants? What he needs? Could he have shared what he does not share with me?_ The thoughts come unsolicited, and Catelyn flings herself onto her back, staring resolutely at the ceiling and willing herself to think of something else. But she cannot.

If Ned had seen himself when he looked at Jon, perhaps he had been thinking of his bastard’s mother, longing for her in these last few days. Longing for the children they might have had together, had Brandon not died, had Ned not married Catelyn in his place, forced to forsake the bastard’s mother.

 

The questions she’s wanted to ask over the years, the images of the bastard’s mother she’s conjured in her head, the doubts and fears about her marriage swirl quickly through her head. She feels the old insecurities creep like ice through her veins and clutches a fist to her chest, reminding herself to breathe.

 

“Enough,” she whispers to herself angrily. It has been a long time since she has allowed herself to drift so long and so uncontrolled into the dark abyss of thinking about the unknown woman who might have had Ned’s heart before she did. She hates herself for the moment of weakness, and stubbornly walks to the mirror to survey the night’s damage in the glass.

 _No matter who the mysterious woman was, his mouth was on your neck, his hands on your hips, and the tangles in your hair are his doing,_  she reminds herself, reaching for the robe behind her.

 _And_ , she thinks,  _had he truly been thinking of the bastard’s mother, why had his sister’s name fallen from his lips in his horrible dreams?_

 

Lost in thought, her hands at the tie around her waist, she is startled when one of her maids enters.

“Milady.” The maid curtsies shyly as she approaches Catelyn.

“Good morning, Jessa,” Catelyn manages to answer stiffly, still trying to shake thoughts of Ned sharing his secrets with another woman from her mind.

“I am sorry to disturb you, Lady Stark, I know it is early. It is only that Lord Stark sent me here.”

“Did he?” She stops herself from turning to Jessa in surprise.

“Yes, milady. He found me before he went to his solar. He said you needed your sleep, so not to disturb you, but that I should build you a better fire to keep you warm.”

 

Catelyn looks down quickly and bites her lip.  _I wouldn’t need a fire if you were still here, instead of running away._  “I thank you, but I am awake now, so there is no need to rebuild it.”

“He also said you might be awake and say that, and I was to tend to it anyway. He seemed quite concerned that you might be cold.”

Jessa quirks her head to survey Catelyn, and catches her eye in the mirror. “Perhaps afterwards, Lady Stark, I might help you with your hair?”

Catelyn feels the heat rise to her cheeks, but manages a nod and small smile to meet the knowing look of her maid reflecting in the glass.

 _Did the gods just send the girl to remind me of my own thoughts?_ She thinks.

“Yes,” she replies softly. “Please help me brush it out. But you may leave it down,” she adds, thinking to herself,  _Ned has always loved my hair._


End file.
